The Hindu Business Line : Building on bamboo

Bamboo, which is now a globally recognised substitute for wood, can be processed into wooden products that may successfully compete in price and performance with conventional options.

H. Vibhu

More use in realty. —

V. Sajeev Kumar

The decline in timber availability and emergence of new technologies and product options have spurred interest in bamboo and coir-based composites as wood substitutes for the building industry.Bamboo-based panels and boards are hard and durable and may successfully substitute hard wood products.

India, being a timber-deficit country, relies heavily on imports. Its annual requirement is about 40 million cu m but only about 0.25 million cu m is available locally. To meet the increasing demand for wood-based panel products, there is a need to identify substitutes. A study by FAO forecasts that wood-based panel consumption in Asia and Oceania will grow at an overall average of 5.3 per cent per year to reach 105 million cu m by 2010, which is well above the average rate of 4 per cent per year for the world as a whole.

The growing consumption, by about 20,000 interior designers and architects in the country, would translate into clearing of 50,753 acres of forest. An exhibition conducted as part of the All India Seminar on National Building Code of India 2005 has lined-up several eco-friendly products required for the building industry, which will enhance comfort while reducing cost.

High-tech raw material

In a paper presented at the all India seminar on National Building Code of India, Mr M. R. Anil Kumar, MD, Kerala State Bamboo Corporation, said that bamboo is quickly transforming its image from a `Poor Man’s tree’ to a high-tech industrial raw material. Bamboo, which is now a globally recognised substitute for wood, can be processed into wooden products that may successfully compete with conventional wood products in price and performance. Engineered bamboo may well replace wood, steel and concrete in many uses. Bamboo-based composite products provide promising linkages between the organised and unorganised sectors, for instance, resin-bonded boards made from hand-woven mats.

The highest priority needs to be accorded to mat-based composites, including flattened bamboo boards, bamboo jute composites, corrugated roofing, shuttering material and mat glass fibre composites because of the employment intensity and linkages between industrial-scale bamboo units and the cottage sector.

The second set of composites is solid wood segment — laminated flooring, furniture sections and other high value products. All bamboo-based wood substitutes have extremely high viability with an internal rate of return varying from 27 to 30 per cent depending upon the scale of manufacturing and cost of raw material.

Replacing wood based panels and hard wood with bamboo mat boards/flattened bamboo boards and flooring tiles is now a fairly well-documented, demonstrated and commercialised technology. Bamboo-based ply is competitive in pricing. Removal of bottlenecks on the supply side should create further downward pressure on prices. There has also been a demand for commercialisation of bamboo as an enterprise at the farmers’ level.

Bamboo should be promoted in the industrial scene through appropriate tie-up arrangements with bamboo-based industries such as paper, handicrafts and the new emerging areas of eco-friendly products such as like housing tiles, flooring and bamboo shoots.

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